Development and performance of wireless sensor network for structural health monitoring

With recent advances in digital circuitry, wireless communications, and Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology have led to the emergence of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) as a novel class of networked embedded systems. Many projects and diverse applications for these systems are currently being explored. The determination of location and extent of structural damage known as Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is significant importance to civil infrastructures such as bridges, dams, offshore platform large buildings. For applying WSN to real-world civil infrastructures monitoring, sensor network architecture is proposed in this paper. The system development includes hardware and software design of the wireless sensor nodes, the design of the sensor network, and the capabilities for remote data access and management. With the ready availability of MEMS sensors, RISC micro-controller and RF unit, a wireless sensor node is designed and fabricated The data being sensed by the sensor nodes in the network is eventually transmitted to a base station, where the information can be accessed. Via the Internet, multiple users with a proper access authorization to the URL site may simultaneously acquire, display data and monitor real-time performance of the structures remotely using a Web browser. In order to support hardware and SHM algorithm development, primitive software architecture is developed using commercially software systems. To demonstrate the feasibility and validity of the proposed WSN, the performance test is done in the laboratory.